Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage

Richard Hakluyt

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. Thirty-five years ago I made a voyage to the Arctic Seas in what Chaucer call

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819948698
• Langue: English

Extrait

INTRODUCTION.
Thirty-five years ago I made a voyage to the ArcticSeas in what Chaucer calls
A little bote
No bigger than a mannë’s thought;
it was a Phantom Ship that made some voyages todifferent parts of the world which were recorded in early numbersof Charles Dickens’s “Household Words. ” As preface to RichardHakluyt’s records of the first endeavour of our bold Elizabethanmariners to find North-West Passage to the East, let me repeat herethat old voyage of mine from No. 55 of “Household Words, ” datedthe 12th of April, 1851: The Phantom is fitted out forArctic exploration, with instructions to find her way, by thenorth-west, to Behring Straits, and take the South Pole on herpassage home. Just now we steer due north, and yonder is the coastof Norway. From that coast parted Hugh Willoughby, three hundredyears ago; the first of our countrymen who wrought an ice-boundhighway to Cathay. Two years afterwards his ships were found, inthe haven of Arzina, in Lapland, by some Russian fishermen; nearand about them Willoughby and his companions— seventy dead men. Theships were freighted with their frozen crews, and sailed forEngland; but, “being unstaunch, as it is supposed, by their twoyears’ wintering in Lapland, sunk, by the way, with their dead, andthem also that brought them. ”
Ice floats about us now, and here is a whaleblowing; a whale, too, very near Spitzbergen. When firstSpitzbergen was discovered, in the good old times, there werewhales here in abundance; then a hundred Dutch ships, in a crowd,might go to work, and boats might jostle with each other, and theonly thing deficient would be stowage room for all the produce ofthe fishery. Now one ship may have the whole field to itself, andtravel home with an imperfect cargo. It was fine fun in the goodold times; there was no need to cruise. Coppers and boilers werefitted on the island, and little colonies about them, in thefishing season, had nothing to do but tow the whales in, with aboat, as fast as they were wanted by the copper. No wonder that soenviable a Tom Tidler’s ground was claimed by all who had a lovefor gold and silver. The English called it theirs, for they firstfished; the Dutch said, nay, but the island was of their discovery;Danes, Hamburghers, Bisayans, Spaniards, and French put in theirclaims; and at length it was agreed to make partitions. Thenumerous bays and harbours which indent the coast were dividedamong the rival nations; and, to this day, many of them bear,accordingly, such names as English Bay, Danes Bay, and so forth.One bay there is, with graves in it, named Sorrow. For it seemed tothe fishers most desirable, if possible, to plant upon this islandpermanent establishments, and condemned convicts were offered, bythe Russians, life and pardon, if they would winter in Spitzbergen.They agreed; but, when they saw the icy mountains and the stormysea, repented, and went back, to meet a death exempt from torture.The Dutch tempted free men, by high rewards, to try the dangerousexperiment. One of their victims left a journal, which describeshis suffering and that of his companions. Their mouths, he says,became so sore that, if they had food, they could not eat; theirlimbs were swollen and disabled with excruciating pain; they diedof scurvy. Those who died first were coffined by their dyingfriends; a row of coffins was found, in the spring, each with a manin it; two men uncoffined, side by side, were dead upon the floor.The journal told how once the traces of a bear excited their hopeof fresh meat and amended health; how, with a lantern, two or threehad limped upon the track, until the light became extinguished, andthey came back in despair to die. We might speak, also, of eightEnglish sailors, left, by accident, upon Spitzbergen, who lived toreturn and tell their winter’s tale; but a long journey is beforeus and we must not linger on the way. As for our whalers, it needscarcely be related that the multitude of whales diminished as theslaughtering went on, until it was no longer possible to keep thecoppers full. The whales had to be searched for by the vessels, andthereafter it was not worth while to take the blubber toSpitzbergen to be boiled; and the different nations, having carriedhome their coppers, left the apparatus of those fishing stations todecay.
Take heed. There is a noise like thunder, and amountain snaps in two. The upper half comes, crashing, grinding,down into the sea, and loosened streams of water follow it. The seais displaced before the mighty heap; it boils and scatters up acloud of spray; it rushes back, and violently beats upon the shore.The mountain rises from its bath, sways to and fro, while waterpours along its mighty sides; now it is tolerably quiet, lettingcrackers off as air escapes out of its cavities. That is aniceberg, and in that way are all icebergs formed. Mountains of iceformed by rain and snow— grand Arctic glaciers, undermined by thesea or by accumulation over-balanced— topple down upon theslightest provocation (moved by a shout, perhaps), and where theyfloat, as this black-looking fellow does, they need deep water.This berg in height is about ninety feet, and a due balancerequires that a mass nine times as large as the part visible shouldbe submerged. Icebergs are seen about us now which rise two hundredfeet above the water’s level.
There are above head plenty of aquatic birds;ashore, or on the ice, are bears, foxes, reindeer; and in the seathere are innumerable animals. We shall not see so much life nearthe North Pole, that is certain. It would be worth while to goashore upon an islet there, near Vogel Sang, to pay a visit to theeider-ducks. Their nests are so abundant that one cannot avoidtreading on them. When the duck is driven by a hungry fox to leaveher eggs, she covers them with down, in order that they may notcool during her absence, and, moreover, glues the down into a casewith a secretion supplied to her by Nature for that purpose. Thedeserted eggs are safe, for that secretion has an odour verydisagreeable to the intruder’s nose.
We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whoseboundaries are not beyond our vision from the masthead— these are“floes; ” between them we find easy way, it is fair “sailing ice. ”In the clear sky to the north a streak of lucid white light is thereflection from an icy surface; that is, “ice-blink, ” in thelanguage of these seas. The glare from snow is yellow, while openwater gives a dark reflection.
Northward still; but now we are in fog the ice istroublesome; a gale is rising. Now, if our ship had timbers theywould crack, and if she had a bell it would be tolling; if we wereshouting to each other we should not hear, the sea is in a fury.With wild force its breakers dash against a heaped-up wall ofbroken ice, that grinds and strains and battles fiercely with thewater. This is “the pack, ” the edge of a great ice-field broken bythe swell. It is a perilous and an exciting thing to push throughpack ice in a gale.
Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is “anice-field. ” Masses are forced up like colossal tombstones on allsides; our sailors call them “hummocks; ” here and there the brokenice displays large “holes of water. ” Shall we go on? Upon thisfield, in 1827, Parry adventured with his men to reach the NorthPole, if that should be possible. With sledges and portable boatsthey laboured on through snow and over hummocks, launching theirboats over the larger holes of water. With stout hearts, undauntedby toil or danger, they went boldly on, though by degrees it becameclear to the leaders of the expedition that they were almost likemice upon a treadmill cage, making a great expenditure of leg forlittle gain. The ice was floating to the south with them, as theywere walking to the north; still they went on. Sleeping by day toavoid the glare, and to get greater warmth during the time of rest,and travelling by night— watch-makers’ days and nights, for it wasall one polar day— the men soon were unable to distinguish noonfrom midnight. The great event of one day on this dreary waste wasthe discovery of two flies upon an ice hummock; these, says Parry,became at once a topic of ridiculous importance. Presently, aftertwenty-three miles’ walking, they had only gone one mile forward,the ice having industriously floated twenty-two miles in theopposite direction; and then, after walking forward eleven miles,they found themselves to be three miles behind the place from whichthey started. The party accordingly returned, not having reachedthe Pole, not having reached the eighty-third parallel, for theattainment of which there was a reward of a thousand pounds heldout by government. They reached the parallel of eighty-two degreesforty-five minutes, which was the most northerly point trodden bythe foot of man.
From that point they returned. In those highlatitudes they met with a phenomenon, common in alpine regions, aswell as at the Pole, red snow; the red colour being caused by theabundance of a minute plant, of low development, the last dwelleron the borders of the vegetable kingdom. More interesting to thesailors was a fat she bear which they killed and devoured with azeal to be repented of; for on reaching navigable sea, and pushingin their boats to Table Island, where some stones were left, theyfound that the bears had eaten all their bread, whereon the menagreed that “Bruin was now square with them. ” An islet next toTable Island— they are both mere rocks— is the most northern landdiscovered. Therefore, Parry applied to it the name of lieutenant—afterwards Sir James— Ross. This compliment Sir James Rossacknowledged in the most emphatic manner, by discovering on hispart, at the other Pole, the most southern land yet seen, andgiving to it the name of Parry: “Parry Mountains. ”
It very probably would not be difficult, under suchcircumstances as Sir W. Parry has since recommended, to reach theNorth Pole along this route. Then (especially if it be true, asma